What do Zimbra, Knol and MobileMe have in common? All three have come out in the past month, all from companies that have loyal customers and solid revenues, and all three are dogs. Yahoo, Google, and Apple should know better: don't push something out the door before it is baked. I've tried them all, and while I haven't spent tons of time to review them, I have seen enough to know that none of them are ready for real customers.
Zimbra is Yahoo's answer to a desktop email client, like Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook, or something similar. It allows you to combine a variety of Web-based emailers like Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and AOL (remember them? I know, there are still a few people in my life that insist on using AOL, try to be kind to them and not sneer) into one unified inbox. The trouble is, it is a product that would have been innovative say back in 1997 or 1998. But today? Nope. Gmail does a terrific job organizing my email, and can collect emails from other systems, too.
Yahoo's email software has always been a day late and a dollar short, sorry guys. Icahn doesn't love you for your email – indeed, if he ever did use a computer, that would probably be the last email product he would pick up. It is clunky, the user interface (both the classic one and the current one) are used in classes on bad design principles, and when you have to manage multiple accounts it bogs down like quicksand. Into this environment we have a solution: let's develop a client emailer! Well, at least give them points for diversity training: it comes in Mac, Windows, and Linux flavors. But a dressed up pig still stinks.
I also don't want to go back to a desktop email client for several reasons: First, because I use several computers during the course of my average day, and when I am on the road I don't want to have to bring my laptop and fight through the TSA screening lines and cart it up and down concourses and escalators ad infinitum. Second, because I have forgotten how to set up POP and IMAP mail servers and don't want to have to dig out my book (which I wrote with Marshall Rose back in 1998) to remember how to do it. Finally, I don't want to have to backup my desktop email archive: having it sorted out by Google's Gmail means I don't have to deal with this chore. Scratch Zimbra.
MobileMe is Apple's latest incarnation to its dot Mac service. It's failures have been well documented, and it has been amusing to watch Apple stumble on this one. Again, give them some points for having both a Windows and Mac versions, but they didn't quite get it right: the Windows version doesn't run on Internet Explorer. Hunh? What reality distortion field were you living in, Steve baby? I mean, what do you expect all those Windows users to do, move over to Safari or Firefox just to run your nifty software? I even said Apple's choice of nomenclature was prophetic: remember Windows Me, the version that lasted all of a few months before Microsoft realized what a dog it was? MobileMe is the Apple version for the rest of us.
And now we have Google's attempt at creating another Wikipedia with Knol. Isn't one Wiki-tiki-web site enough for our universe? And I mean the good folks over there all due respect. I like Wikipedia, it is responsible for endless hours of amusement and resolving pivotal factual arguments in my life. Granted, Knol has some nifty name verification features, so that you can at least have some clue who is writing all that free content and whether you want to trust them when you have to cut and paste it into your next term paper. But I couldn't verify my name using either with a credit card or phone number, probably because I have just moved and the addresses aren't on file. Oh well.
But more importantly, why oh why would Google get into the content creation business just to piss off every one of their advertising partners? It doesn't make any AdSense. Some have already claimed that Google IS in the content business already, we just haven't been paying attention. I will leave that argument for another day.
Knol, MobileMe, and Zimbra are all cases of bad products coming from otherwise good companies. Notice I didn't draw any parallels to any number of past Microsoft products, like Bob, Vista, DOS 4, or even MSN for that matter. Remember those?
If you have your favorite bad-product-from-good-company story, please share.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Using OpenDNS to protect your network
This week we had another Internet security exploit revealed. And while I don't want to get into the details, let's just say that if you aren't using OpenDNS.com for your home network, now is the time to take the five minutes and get it done. It is simple (well, as these things go), it is free, and it will protect you from any number of issues in the future. And you might get better browsing performance as a result.
Before I tell you how to do this, let's have a brief explanation of what the Domain Name System is for those of you that really want to know. Think of what a phone book (remember them, before we used online searches to look up a friend's number, seems so quaint now) does – it allows you if you know someone's name to look up their phone number. The names are in alphabetical order, so if you know the alphabet, you can quickly page through and find the person, if they are listed.
The DNS does something similar, except for computers: if you type in "google.com" it translates that name into a sequence of four numbers, called an IP address, which in this case for google.com is 72.14.207.99. Paul Mockapetris, a gentleman I have spent some time with and one of the Internet bright lights, put the thing together in the early 1980s, which is enshrined in RFC 882, even before Al Gore had invented the Internet itself.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc882
The overall Internet infrastructure has a series of master phone books, or DNS root servers, located at strategic places around the world and maintained by a collection of public, semi-public, and private providers. They talk to each other on a regular basis, to make sure that as we add new domains they are in synch. As you can imagine, if someone wants to "poison" one of the entries, or misdirect Internet traffic to a phony domain, it can be done with the right amount of subterfuge.
Here is where OpenDNS comes into play. When you set up your home network, typically you don't give your DNS settings any further thought. If you have a cable or DSL modem, you hook it up and it automatically gets its DNS settings from the cable or phone company's DNS servers.
What I am suggesting is that you change these settings, to reflect the DNS servers at OpenDNS. There are instructions on their Web site, but basically you specify the two (one is used for backup) DNS IP addresses for your router or DSL/cable modem. If you have a wireless gateway from Netgear or someone similar, you make the entries there. You need to know the router's IP address, and how to access it via its Web interface.
There are a few nice things about using OpenDNS. First, you can set it up to block objectionable domains, so that you might be able to get around your kids seeing something that you would rather they didn't. They also spend time to block known exploit domains, so you have a better chance of not getting trapped by some hacker. You also get better DNS service, because they have servers that will return the domains supposedly faster than the ones for the general Internet. They also catch common typos, so if you are like me and make mistakes typing in names in your browser, they can usually direct you to the place you intended.
How do they make money? If you type in an unknown domain name, you are directed to their search page where they show ads, just like the Google search pages.
OpenDNS is not the answer for everyone, and businesses should go a step further and protect their DNS servers on their networks. While I don't want to get into that here, you can find out more about the explot from the experts, start with this blog post here:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/87143_dns_not_a_guessing_game/
It is sad that the Internet is at risk: this exploit is serious, and goes at the core protocol that everyone uses all day long. Hopefully, the engineers will find a fix soon.
Before I tell you how to do this, let's have a brief explanation of what the Domain Name System is for those of you that really want to know. Think of what a phone book (remember them, before we used online searches to look up a friend's number, seems so quaint now) does – it allows you if you know someone's name to look up their phone number. The names are in alphabetical order, so if you know the alphabet, you can quickly page through and find the person, if they are listed.
The DNS does something similar, except for computers: if you type in "google.com" it translates that name into a sequence of four numbers, called an IP address, which in this case for google.com is 72.14.207.99. Paul Mockapetris, a gentleman I have spent some time with and one of the Internet bright lights, put the thing together in the early 1980s, which is enshrined in RFC 882, even before Al Gore had invented the Internet itself.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc882
The overall Internet infrastructure has a series of master phone books, or DNS root servers, located at strategic places around the world and maintained by a collection of public, semi-public, and private providers. They talk to each other on a regular basis, to make sure that as we add new domains they are in synch. As you can imagine, if someone wants to "poison" one of the entries, or misdirect Internet traffic to a phony domain, it can be done with the right amount of subterfuge.
Here is where OpenDNS comes into play. When you set up your home network, typically you don't give your DNS settings any further thought. If you have a cable or DSL modem, you hook it up and it automatically gets its DNS settings from the cable or phone company's DNS servers.
What I am suggesting is that you change these settings, to reflect the DNS servers at OpenDNS. There are instructions on their Web site, but basically you specify the two (one is used for backup) DNS IP addresses for your router or DSL/cable modem. If you have a wireless gateway from Netgear or someone similar, you make the entries there. You need to know the router's IP address, and how to access it via its Web interface.
There are a few nice things about using OpenDNS. First, you can set it up to block objectionable domains, so that you might be able to get around your kids seeing something that you would rather they didn't. They also spend time to block known exploit domains, so you have a better chance of not getting trapped by some hacker. You also get better DNS service, because they have servers that will return the domains supposedly faster than the ones for the general Internet. They also catch common typos, so if you are like me and make mistakes typing in names in your browser, they can usually direct you to the place you intended.
How do they make money? If you type in an unknown domain name, you are directed to their search page where they show ads, just like the Google search pages.
OpenDNS is not the answer for everyone, and businesses should go a step further and protect their DNS servers on their networks. While I don't want to get into that here, you can find out more about the explot from the experts, start with this blog post here:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/87143_dns_not_a_guessing_game/
It is sad that the Internet is at risk: this exploit is serious, and goes at the core protocol that everyone uses all day long. Hopefully, the engineers will find a fix soon.
Monday, July 7, 2008
A grown-up's guide to legal music downloads
The reason for the title is simple: we all know that a world of music is available for the stealing from any number of sites. But if you want to download music legally – and if you are going to pay for it you might as well get it without any DRM copy protection restrictions -- what are your choices?
Before embarking on this project, I asked my kids if they have ever heard of any of these services. Other than iTunes, I got blank stares. Of course, none of them pay for their digital music, and don't care. Here are the five sites that I spent time with:
eMusic.com offers several different monthly subscription plans for what they claim are from two million DRM-free songs. The cheapest is for 30 song downloads at $12 per month, up to the most expensive at $20 for 75 songs a month. No matter which plan, you get 50 free downloads and you can cancel your subscription at any time. If you want to be really mercenary about the whole deal, you can sign up, take your 50 songs, and cancel within the same day, without spending a dime. You have to sign up before you can browse their store, however.
Rhapsody.com from Real Networks claims more than four million songs, and you can just listen to the full length of up to 25 tracks a month for free, provided you sign up and give them the right to send you unlimited email solicitations. (They are a bix obnoxious in that regard.) If you want to download them, you pay 99 cents per most songs or $10 per most albums. You can only download a song once, and if you use their Windows software, it will automatically add the songs to iTunes (but not Windows Media, they are still a bit huffy after the lawsuits). Mac or Linux users can download a zip file with multiple songs included, and then you have to manually import them into your music library.
Amazon.com has "millions" of songs, but unlike Rhapsody you can only listen to a 30 second sample and not the entire song. They have optional downloading software for Windows, Linux and Mac that will add them automatically to iTunes (or Windows Media) and makes buying multiple tracks simple. If you don't use the downloader, you have to download one track at a time. Each song is 89 or 99 cents, albums range from $6 to $10. The ones I purchased had fairly high encoding rates of 256 kbps. You can only download them once like Rhapsody.
iTunes Music Store (who claims a catalog of five million songs) is beginning to experiment with DRM-free music from some of its publishers. The songs are 256 kbps encoded and cost the same as the copy protected songs. If you have bought a DRM'ed version previously you can upgrade for an additional 30 cents a track or a third of the price of the original album purchase. To do this (not that you want to give Apple any more dough), you go to the iTunes Store within the latest version of the software, click on the link for "iTunes Plus," and then click on the upgrade button. It will show you which of your tracks can be upgraded and what it will cost. Unlike the other services, you are buying an AAC file rather than an MP3, but most portable and PC-based players will be okay with this format.
Finally, there is SpiralFrog.com, an interesting site run by a friend of mine that doesn't charge for its downloads, but only gives you music that contains DRM. They claim 800,000 tracks and have a large music video selection as well. You need to be running a recent version of Windows, Windows Media Player and dot Net Framework. Unlike eMusic, you don't need to register and Install their download manager to browse the site, so you can get an Idea of what they have to offer. But once you install their software, you can download whatever you desire. And one other limitation: you can't copy their tracks to more than two portable players, and you can't play them of course on iPods. You also can't play them on Zunes, which shows you how messed up Microsoft's DRM Is.
So there you have it. There are some choices, other than stealing your music. If you want to do a lot of downloads, I would go with eMusic, especially if you go beyond 15 or so songs a month, but it is a subscription service and right now you might feel as I do that you are paying enough between monthly charges for premium cable, premium DSL, and premium unleaded gas.
If you are the occasional downloader, as I am, then Amazon makes the most sense, especially as I have my music on my Mac and it has a nice client for that OS. You can turn on the one-click ordering and it is effortless. I don't like Rhapsody's corporate culture, and if you use the iTunes player the imports into your library is cumbersome. And while the iTunes Plus Music Store is trying to get more DRM-free tunes, most of its music is still copy-protected, so best to steer clear until that changes. Finally, SpiralFrog has an Interesting twist on the music download, but since I am Mac and iPod-based it Isn't for me.
Before embarking on this project, I asked my kids if they have ever heard of any of these services. Other than iTunes, I got blank stares. Of course, none of them pay for their digital music, and don't care. Here are the five sites that I spent time with:
eMusic.com offers several different monthly subscription plans for what they claim are from two million DRM-free songs. The cheapest is for 30 song downloads at $12 per month, up to the most expensive at $20 for 75 songs a month. No matter which plan, you get 50 free downloads and you can cancel your subscription at any time. If you want to be really mercenary about the whole deal, you can sign up, take your 50 songs, and cancel within the same day, without spending a dime. You have to sign up before you can browse their store, however.
Rhapsody.com from Real Networks claims more than four million songs, and you can just listen to the full length of up to 25 tracks a month for free, provided you sign up and give them the right to send you unlimited email solicitations. (They are a bix obnoxious in that regard.) If you want to download them, you pay 99 cents per most songs or $10 per most albums. You can only download a song once, and if you use their Windows software, it will automatically add the songs to iTunes (but not Windows Media, they are still a bit huffy after the lawsuits). Mac or Linux users can download a zip file with multiple songs included, and then you have to manually import them into your music library.
Amazon.com has "millions" of songs, but unlike Rhapsody you can only listen to a 30 second sample and not the entire song. They have optional downloading software for Windows, Linux and Mac that will add them automatically to iTunes (or Windows Media) and makes buying multiple tracks simple. If you don't use the downloader, you have to download one track at a time. Each song is 89 or 99 cents, albums range from $6 to $10. The ones I purchased had fairly high encoding rates of 256 kbps. You can only download them once like Rhapsody.
iTunes Music Store (who claims a catalog of five million songs) is beginning to experiment with DRM-free music from some of its publishers. The songs are 256 kbps encoded and cost the same as the copy protected songs. If you have bought a DRM'ed version previously you can upgrade for an additional 30 cents a track or a third of the price of the original album purchase. To do this (not that you want to give Apple any more dough), you go to the iTunes Store within the latest version of the software, click on the link for "iTunes Plus," and then click on the upgrade button. It will show you which of your tracks can be upgraded and what it will cost. Unlike the other services, you are buying an AAC file rather than an MP3, but most portable and PC-based players will be okay with this format.
Finally, there is SpiralFrog.com, an interesting site run by a friend of mine that doesn't charge for its downloads, but only gives you music that contains DRM. They claim 800,000 tracks and have a large music video selection as well. You need to be running a recent version of Windows, Windows Media Player and dot Net Framework. Unlike eMusic, you don't need to register and Install their download manager to browse the site, so you can get an Idea of what they have to offer. But once you install their software, you can download whatever you desire. And one other limitation: you can't copy their tracks to more than two portable players, and you can't play them of course on iPods. You also can't play them on Zunes, which shows you how messed up Microsoft's DRM Is.
So there you have it. There are some choices, other than stealing your music. If you want to do a lot of downloads, I would go with eMusic, especially if you go beyond 15 or so songs a month, but it is a subscription service and right now you might feel as I do that you are paying enough between monthly charges for premium cable, premium DSL, and premium unleaded gas.
If you are the occasional downloader, as I am, then Amazon makes the most sense, especially as I have my music on my Mac and it has a nice client for that OS. You can turn on the one-click ordering and it is effortless. I don't like Rhapsody's corporate culture, and if you use the iTunes player the imports into your library is cumbersome. And while the iTunes Plus Music Store is trying to get more DRM-free tunes, most of its music is still copy-protected, so best to steer clear until that changes. Finally, SpiralFrog has an Interesting twist on the music download, but since I am Mac and iPod-based it Isn't for me.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
The changing nature of pop culture distribution
My wife and I watched the movie Juno last night, and I highly recommend it for your own viewing. But this isn't a review of the movie, what sparked today's essay is how (depressingly) little of its dialogue I didn't understand. This was because of the quick cultural references spoken by the teenagers portrayed in the movie. I guess I am getting to that generation where words like cool and hep cat are no longer part of the lexicon. I know, this isn't a news flash.
It occurred to me that years from now we will watch this movie and need on-screen annotations to explain what they are talking about.
But the movie is a static, finished entity. What is more interesting to watch is how pop culture references are being incorporated into various online media, and how they are passed around, consumed, and transformed as part of the media itself. As the online world becomes more a fixture in our lives, we are seeing a much more complex evolution. It isn't just the insertion of a bunch of slang words, but an almost complete encoding or translation of pop culture itself. Witness leet-speak, the gamer lingo that results from substituting numbers for letters that luckily (for me, at least) peaked a few years ago. The more cynical of us could look upon leet as just a substitution cipher, but it really is more than that, embodying a way of life and world view. (The best example is the Pure Pwnage videos available here:
http://www.purepwnage.com)
The most recent evidence of pop culture is this music video by Weezer (for those of you that don't know, they are a pop music group):
http://www.youtube.com/user/weezer?ob=1
The video contains visual references to a wide variety of topics. The difference is that these are mostly other Internet videos and online personality references. It is a very clever collection too, and like the Juno dialogue I doubt that I got more than a few of them even after repeated viewings.
Back in my misspent youth, we didn't have online videos. (Well, duh!) We were lucky to have black and white TV, and we had to contend with decoding rebus puzzles, and playing Sgt. Pepper backwards on our turntables to hear "Paul is dead" and figuring out Mad magazine's parodies. When we did get computers, we thought the ultimate in geek coolness (sorry, I will try to think of another word that doesn't date me) were Easter Eggs, bits of hidden code that required you to hit five different keys to bring them up.
Now we have fake news that contains some truth and is broadcast every night on the comedy channel, serious news that contains some fake information that is broadcast on the news channels, and music videos that contain sly references to other videos. The mind boggles at the whole interconnectedness of it all. We have invented words used by the fake anchors like "truthiness" that are included in dictionaries, and script writers for reality shows.
Yes, we are at new levels of how pop culture is being incorporated, parodied, and encoded by teens, and others too cool for school, even some noobs (maybe). It will be interesting to look back on this moment in time and see if anyone in the future can figure any of it out, or maybe they'll say, "Wassup with that?"
It occurred to me that years from now we will watch this movie and need on-screen annotations to explain what they are talking about.
But the movie is a static, finished entity. What is more interesting to watch is how pop culture references are being incorporated into various online media, and how they are passed around, consumed, and transformed as part of the media itself. As the online world becomes more a fixture in our lives, we are seeing a much more complex evolution. It isn't just the insertion of a bunch of slang words, but an almost complete encoding or translation of pop culture itself. Witness leet-speak, the gamer lingo that results from substituting numbers for letters that luckily (for me, at least) peaked a few years ago. The more cynical of us could look upon leet as just a substitution cipher, but it really is more than that, embodying a way of life and world view. (The best example is the Pure Pwnage videos available here:
http://www.purepwnage.com)
The most recent evidence of pop culture is this music video by Weezer (for those of you that don't know, they are a pop music group):
http://www.youtube.com/user/weezer?ob=1
The video contains visual references to a wide variety of topics. The difference is that these are mostly other Internet videos and online personality references. It is a very clever collection too, and like the Juno dialogue I doubt that I got more than a few of them even after repeated viewings.
Back in my misspent youth, we didn't have online videos. (Well, duh!) We were lucky to have black and white TV, and we had to contend with decoding rebus puzzles, and playing Sgt. Pepper backwards on our turntables to hear "Paul is dead" and figuring out Mad magazine's parodies. When we did get computers, we thought the ultimate in geek coolness (sorry, I will try to think of another word that doesn't date me) were Easter Eggs, bits of hidden code that required you to hit five different keys to bring them up.
Now we have fake news that contains some truth and is broadcast every night on the comedy channel, serious news that contains some fake information that is broadcast on the news channels, and music videos that contain sly references to other videos. The mind boggles at the whole interconnectedness of it all. We have invented words used by the fake anchors like "truthiness" that are included in dictionaries, and script writers for reality shows.
Yes, we are at new levels of how pop culture is being incorporated, parodied, and encoded by teens, and others too cool for school, even some noobs (maybe). It will be interesting to look back on this moment in time and see if anyone in the future can figure any of it out, or maybe they'll say, "Wassup with that?"
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Cheap tech is often unusable tech
While gas prices continue to climb, it is helpful to see how much technology is a bargain these days. In doing some research for one of my speeches, I poured over some old computer magazines that I have, especially their ads, in a walk down memory lane. (I have been doing a lot of public speaking: today I am in Vegas, next week I am off to do a speech at my alma mater Union College.)
As short as ten years ago, a typical base price for a 16 MHz PC was $5,500, with 40 MB of disk storage. I think greeting card CPUs have more disk and clock speed than that old school PC. By the time you got a monitor, all of 12 inches in diagonal (try to find something that small today!), and some more RAM (2 MB sold for about $1,700), you were closing in on 10 large. Today, you would be hard pressed to pay more than $2,000, and you can get a decent laptop for less than half that.
When I first started doing IT work for Monolithic Insurance, I had to buy memory boards that were just the boards, devoid of any memory chips on them. This was back in the Jurassic era of computing, when 640 kilobytes was the maximum RAM we could use. We had to then “stuff” them with the little RAM chips, and make sure we didn’t bend their numerous pins as we were doing so. Those were the days. Now, a one gigabyte memory “stick” is about the size of my finger and no assembly is required, and can be had for less than $100. Just to put this in perspective, my daughter’s iPod has more storage than any of the PCs that I have owned up until a few years ago.
But it isn’t just that prices have come down. Lest we forget how important Internet connectivity is, two recent stories from the news show you why you wouldn’t want to leave home without it. After a woman’s Mac was stolen, its owner was notified that the thief was online and using her IM account. She then used the built-in camera and remote control software to capture a picture of its thief – who turned out to be two people she knew. The police were able to capture them and return the computer to the owner. And an Eye-Fi equipped camera, stolen in Florida, automatically uploaded the photos taken by the thieves to the owner’s Web site. Too bad the photos didn’t reveal the location or the identity of the criminals.
I am not making this up. What this says to me is that Internet connectivity has become so intrinsic to the PC that we forget not too long ago you had to jump through all sorts of protocol hoops to install it and configure it. Now we just open up our laptops no matter where we are and usually can get a connection, and a free one at that.
But as I stumble down memory lane, I am beginning to feel my age. Some of these tech gadgets can be downright annoying, and I am starting to see how some of these thieves mentioned above feel when I go into the average public bathroom. Even though I am surrounded by technology during my business day, I don’t want to have to rely on my engineering degree to do my business. With all of its electronic sensors and other technological wonders that are part of Bathroom 2.0, it can be frustrating even for the uber geeks among us. How about the soap dish that so nicely dispenses just two drops of soap, or the automatic faucet that splashes an inadequate amount of water on my hands? The final touch is the automatic paper towel (or air dryer), neither of which can deliver the goods. The former often presents me with a square of paper that could barely be used to dry one finger, let alone both hands, while the later either blows just enough air to move the water around your hands or shuts off after a few seconds, leaving you wet and frustrated.
So it is great that you can get a 32 GB USB thumb drive for less than $200, about half of what it went for a couple of months ago. But it sure would be nice if we could spend a little more time on making all this stuff more usable too.
As short as ten years ago, a typical base price for a 16 MHz PC was $5,500, with 40 MB of disk storage. I think greeting card CPUs have more disk and clock speed than that old school PC. By the time you got a monitor, all of 12 inches in diagonal (try to find something that small today!), and some more RAM (2 MB sold for about $1,700), you were closing in on 10 large. Today, you would be hard pressed to pay more than $2,000, and you can get a decent laptop for less than half that.
When I first started doing IT work for Monolithic Insurance, I had to buy memory boards that were just the boards, devoid of any memory chips on them. This was back in the Jurassic era of computing, when 640 kilobytes was the maximum RAM we could use. We had to then “stuff” them with the little RAM chips, and make sure we didn’t bend their numerous pins as we were doing so. Those were the days. Now, a one gigabyte memory “stick” is about the size of my finger and no assembly is required, and can be had for less than $100. Just to put this in perspective, my daughter’s iPod has more storage than any of the PCs that I have owned up until a few years ago.
But it isn’t just that prices have come down. Lest we forget how important Internet connectivity is, two recent stories from the news show you why you wouldn’t want to leave home without it. After a woman’s Mac was stolen, its owner was notified that the thief was online and using her IM account. She then used the built-in camera and remote control software to capture a picture of its thief – who turned out to be two people she knew. The police were able to capture them and return the computer to the owner. And an Eye-Fi equipped camera, stolen in Florida, automatically uploaded the photos taken by the thieves to the owner’s Web site. Too bad the photos didn’t reveal the location or the identity of the criminals.
I am not making this up. What this says to me is that Internet connectivity has become so intrinsic to the PC that we forget not too long ago you had to jump through all sorts of protocol hoops to install it and configure it. Now we just open up our laptops no matter where we are and usually can get a connection, and a free one at that.
But as I stumble down memory lane, I am beginning to feel my age. Some of these tech gadgets can be downright annoying, and I am starting to see how some of these thieves mentioned above feel when I go into the average public bathroom. Even though I am surrounded by technology during my business day, I don’t want to have to rely on my engineering degree to do my business. With all of its electronic sensors and other technological wonders that are part of Bathroom 2.0, it can be frustrating even for the uber geeks among us. How about the soap dish that so nicely dispenses just two drops of soap, or the automatic faucet that splashes an inadequate amount of water on my hands? The final touch is the automatic paper towel (or air dryer), neither of which can deliver the goods. The former often presents me with a square of paper that could barely be used to dry one finger, let alone both hands, while the later either blows just enough air to move the water around your hands or shuts off after a few seconds, leaving you wet and frustrated.
So it is great that you can get a 32 GB USB thumb drive for less than $200, about half of what it went for a couple of months ago. But it sure would be nice if we could spend a little more time on making all this stuff more usable too.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Making the switch to computer-based calling
I have been a user of Vonage for my main business line for at least four years and mostly a happy customer. But a series of anticipated moves this summer got me thinking: do I really need this service any longer? And so I have come up with a rather strange plan, so stick with me here for a minute while I explain how I got to my post-VOIP mobile telephony world.
I spend about $60 a month for my business telephone service: half on Vonage, half on AT&T for providing DSL service to my home (which I share for both home and business connectivity). This summer I will be moving across town and splitting off my office into a separate location. First I thought I would just get a cable modem and move the Vonage box and line over to run on that. That is the beauty of tying your business line to a VOIP service: it can move with you. Plus, with the cable downloads at 10 Mb, I can get those mission-critical movies and other image files that are so important to my day-to-day work life.
But the more I pondered that situation, the more I thought I would be better off if I got one of the AT&T broadband PC modems and used my computer for all my outbound calls. The modems are free with rebates and a two-year service plan, and you pay $60 a month for unlimited Internet access. Some of them are USB so can work with desktops, laptops, Macs or Windows. This is the same $60 a month that I was paying for my business line. The downside is that I won't get anywhere near 10 Mb downloads, but that might cut back on the opportunities to view unneeded visual content.
I am already a big fan of Skype, and they offer an unlimited Skype Out subscription for less than $3 a month to everyplace that I would call with the Vonage account for the most part (you can get more expensive packages if you want to call international places). You can also purchase an inbound number for Skype for a few more dollars a month, but the number of people calling me doesn't justify this, yet.
There are a couple of important caveats to note here. First, I make a lot of calls to conferencing services, so I need to be able to continue to dial touch tones after the initial call goes through. With Skype, this isn't a problem: you get a cute little keypad that you can type in your conference number and PIN and away you go.
Second, more importantly, I no longer will be using the actual telephone that has been sitting on my desk for the past 16 years. Granted, this phone has been in many difference cities, and at the beginning of its life was used on New York Telephone where I was paying something like two cents a minute for local calls. The more I thought about my solution, the more I began to miss this old friend and desk totem. As a friend of mine said, it is like you have to clean out the last boxes from your old bedroom at your parents' house. I will miss the concept of this old Ma Bell ringy-dingy most of all -- even though it doesn't serve any current purpose in my new post-VOIP life.
I don't mind the headset, and in fact I have a whole passel of Bluetooth headsets that should work on my Mac and Windows PCs for the calls, if I don't want to use the wired one.
But the third issue is the most important one. To make this trick work, I would need to port my existing Vonage number over to one of my wireless phones. The only way to know if you can do this is to go into an AT&T company-owned store (there are other franchise stores that look exactly the same so it pays to call their support line and find out) and ask them if it is eligible for porting.
I called my local AT&T store and first was told they couldn't port any Vonage numbers. Then after I persisted, they said I could and just stop by. So far so good.
So what I have in mind is extreme mobility: I should be able to make calls anywhere I have my laptop, as long as I have AT&T broadband service (which should be in most of the major cities I am in). This also has the extra advantage that I am not trying to find Wifi service or have to pay extra when I am in a hotel or airport, because usually those places have wireless broadband. If not, I can use my cell phone, which will be my primary business line. And under the worse case scenario, I can carry an Ethernet cable (remember those) and a phone card and use a payphone!
I am interested in your experiences with the AT&T broadband PC cards, so leave a comment on my Strominator.com blog if you don't mind. Do you think I am crazy, to contemplate doing this? I think it is kinda exciting.
I spend about $60 a month for my business telephone service: half on Vonage, half on AT&T for providing DSL service to my home (which I share for both home and business connectivity). This summer I will be moving across town and splitting off my office into a separate location. First I thought I would just get a cable modem and move the Vonage box and line over to run on that. That is the beauty of tying your business line to a VOIP service: it can move with you. Plus, with the cable downloads at 10 Mb, I can get those mission-critical movies and other image files that are so important to my day-to-day work life.
But the more I pondered that situation, the more I thought I would be better off if I got one of the AT&T broadband PC modems and used my computer for all my outbound calls. The modems are free with rebates and a two-year service plan, and you pay $60 a month for unlimited Internet access. Some of them are USB so can work with desktops, laptops, Macs or Windows. This is the same $60 a month that I was paying for my business line. The downside is that I won't get anywhere near 10 Mb downloads, but that might cut back on the opportunities to view unneeded visual content.
I am already a big fan of Skype, and they offer an unlimited Skype Out subscription for less than $3 a month to everyplace that I would call with the Vonage account for the most part (you can get more expensive packages if you want to call international places). You can also purchase an inbound number for Skype for a few more dollars a month, but the number of people calling me doesn't justify this, yet.
There are a couple of important caveats to note here. First, I make a lot of calls to conferencing services, so I need to be able to continue to dial touch tones after the initial call goes through. With Skype, this isn't a problem: you get a cute little keypad that you can type in your conference number and PIN and away you go.
Second, more importantly, I no longer will be using the actual telephone that has been sitting on my desk for the past 16 years. Granted, this phone has been in many difference cities, and at the beginning of its life was used on New York Telephone where I was paying something like two cents a minute for local calls. The more I thought about my solution, the more I began to miss this old friend and desk totem. As a friend of mine said, it is like you have to clean out the last boxes from your old bedroom at your parents' house. I will miss the concept of this old Ma Bell ringy-dingy most of all -- even though it doesn't serve any current purpose in my new post-VOIP life.
I don't mind the headset, and in fact I have a whole passel of Bluetooth headsets that should work on my Mac and Windows PCs for the calls, if I don't want to use the wired one.
But the third issue is the most important one. To make this trick work, I would need to port my existing Vonage number over to one of my wireless phones. The only way to know if you can do this is to go into an AT&T company-owned store (there are other franchise stores that look exactly the same so it pays to call their support line and find out) and ask them if it is eligible for porting.
I called my local AT&T store and first was told they couldn't port any Vonage numbers. Then after I persisted, they said I could and just stop by. So far so good.
So what I have in mind is extreme mobility: I should be able to make calls anywhere I have my laptop, as long as I have AT&T broadband service (which should be in most of the major cities I am in). This also has the extra advantage that I am not trying to find Wifi service or have to pay extra when I am in a hotel or airport, because usually those places have wireless broadband. If not, I can use my cell phone, which will be my primary business line. And under the worse case scenario, I can carry an Ethernet cable (remember those) and a phone card and use a payphone!
I am interested in your experiences with the AT&T broadband PC cards, so leave a comment on my Strominator.com blog if you don't mind. Do you think I am crazy, to contemplate doing this? I think it is kinda exciting.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Choosing the right email listserv
Choosing the right email listserv
I am doing a seminar tonight here in St. Louis that talks about how to use blogs and other Internet tools for self-published authors. And one of the first things that I wanted to talk about has to do with email lists. Ironic, but the underpinning of Web 2.0 is something so old that we take it for granted.
Email is at the core of just about anything else that you do on the Web: it is the primary notification mechanism for Facebook et al. when you make changes to your site. It is the way these social sites find your network of contacts, and the way that you keep your audience informed of what you are doing, too. You can have the best Web site going, but you need to remind people about what you have on it. Ironically, that was the original reason that I started Web Informant lo' those many years ago.
Why bother with an email list when you can just send out a bunch of emails from your desktop? Several reasons: First, you get a more professional means of communication that can manage all the bounces and mistaken reply-to-everyone situations. Your desktop program isn't designed to send out a message to hundreds or thousands of recipients either, while the list servers are. You also don't have to reveal all your subscribers in the "To:" field, which I still see from certain PR people. (Hey, thanks for sending me your contact list! I will be sure to take note of whom you think are my colleagues.) Finally, a list server or list provider can manage unsubscribes automatically, as well as post your messages in an archive that is available online for anyone to review.
Over the years I have used many different technologies to maintain this humble email list, so I have had some experience with the technology. If you are starting a new list, you have three basic choices: the free, the cheap, and the pricey. While price alone is a good way to decide, there are some other reasons that are less obvious. Let's talk about a few typical providers for each category: Google and Yahoo Groups (free), Mailman hosted by EMWD.com for $4 a month and iContact. If you don't want to read how to do this and want to watch one of my screencast videos that actually shows you the process, go on over to http://yourpersonalgeek.tv now.
No matter what method you choose, you will need to assemble all your email addresses that you want to start your list with. You can export these from your email program into a text file, and then bring up the file in a word processor program. The first time that you do this is painful, no doubt. You have to cull through all your correspondence, and I guarantee you that many of your addresses will be outdated, given how quickly people change jobs these days.
For free list servers, I like Yahoo Groups. It offers a lot of control, easy list management, and the Web-based control screens are easy to understand and figure out where things are located. There is one big downside, though -- the ability to set up large lists quickly. Yahoo only lets you add 10 people a day to your list without asking them to opt-in. To get around this, you can use Google Groups, which supports lists up to 500 names. Google Groups has fewer features though. I use Yahoo Groups for supporting many community lists that I maintain.
To get started, go to groups.google.com or groups.yahoo.com and click on the create a new group button at the top of the page and fill out the form. You can cut and paste the email addresses from your master list right in the Web form and you are ready to go. With both Google and Yahoo, you have a few parameters that you want to make sure you set correctly in terms of who can join your list and how they see messages from you. I suggest you experiment with just a few names as a test before you add the entire list so you can get the hang of things.
Mailman is a more professional program and gives you all sorts of control over the message and recipients, and it is what I currently use for this list. I recommend the provider EMWD.com – there are others but they are more expensive. You need to obtain an account for $10, and this will give you access via the Web to a series of control screens, fill-in forms, and zillions of parameters. This is more complex than Google, but you have more control. As I said, each list only costs $4 a month to operate. You need to set up a subdomain that points to their list server, and you can usually do that with your registrar's control panels.
But this may not be fancy enough for your purposes. If you want to add Web links in your emails and track who clicks on which link, such as for promotional purposes, then you want iContact. I personally don't like rich HTML emails but I know many of you want this, so I mention it here. The cheapest plan is $10 a month for up to 500 names. If you have 2500 names, the fee increases to $30 a month. The more names, the more you pay a month. The advantage of iContact is that you can send out very snazzy emails, with pictures, color, and links to Web sites, and maintaining lists is all they do. You don't have to mess with setting up domains or servers, either. And like the others, everything is set up with a series of Web forms that are fairly easy, with lots of control over how the newsletter will look like.
So there you have it. Good luck with your list.
I am doing a seminar tonight here in St. Louis that talks about how to use blogs and other Internet tools for self-published authors. And one of the first things that I wanted to talk about has to do with email lists. Ironic, but the underpinning of Web 2.0 is something so old that we take it for granted.
Email is at the core of just about anything else that you do on the Web: it is the primary notification mechanism for Facebook et al. when you make changes to your site. It is the way these social sites find your network of contacts, and the way that you keep your audience informed of what you are doing, too. You can have the best Web site going, but you need to remind people about what you have on it. Ironically, that was the original reason that I started Web Informant lo' those many years ago.
Why bother with an email list when you can just send out a bunch of emails from your desktop? Several reasons: First, you get a more professional means of communication that can manage all the bounces and mistaken reply-to-everyone situations. Your desktop program isn't designed to send out a message to hundreds or thousands of recipients either, while the list servers are. You also don't have to reveal all your subscribers in the "To:" field, which I still see from certain PR people. (Hey, thanks for sending me your contact list! I will be sure to take note of whom you think are my colleagues.) Finally, a list server or list provider can manage unsubscribes automatically, as well as post your messages in an archive that is available online for anyone to review.
Over the years I have used many different technologies to maintain this humble email list, so I have had some experience with the technology. If you are starting a new list, you have three basic choices: the free, the cheap, and the pricey. While price alone is a good way to decide, there are some other reasons that are less obvious. Let's talk about a few typical providers for each category: Google and Yahoo Groups (free), Mailman hosted by EMWD.com for $4 a month and iContact. If you don't want to read how to do this and want to watch one of my screencast videos that actually shows you the process, go on over to http://yourpersonalgeek.tv now.
No matter what method you choose, you will need to assemble all your email addresses that you want to start your list with. You can export these from your email program into a text file, and then bring up the file in a word processor program. The first time that you do this is painful, no doubt. You have to cull through all your correspondence, and I guarantee you that many of your addresses will be outdated, given how quickly people change jobs these days.
For free list servers, I like Yahoo Groups. It offers a lot of control, easy list management, and the Web-based control screens are easy to understand and figure out where things are located. There is one big downside, though -- the ability to set up large lists quickly. Yahoo only lets you add 10 people a day to your list without asking them to opt-in. To get around this, you can use Google Groups, which supports lists up to 500 names. Google Groups has fewer features though. I use Yahoo Groups for supporting many community lists that I maintain.
To get started, go to groups.google.com or groups.yahoo.com and click on the create a new group button at the top of the page and fill out the form. You can cut and paste the email addresses from your master list right in the Web form and you are ready to go. With both Google and Yahoo, you have a few parameters that you want to make sure you set correctly in terms of who can join your list and how they see messages from you. I suggest you experiment with just a few names as a test before you add the entire list so you can get the hang of things.
Mailman is a more professional program and gives you all sorts of control over the message and recipients, and it is what I currently use for this list. I recommend the provider EMWD.com – there are others but they are more expensive. You need to obtain an account for $10, and this will give you access via the Web to a series of control screens, fill-in forms, and zillions of parameters. This is more complex than Google, but you have more control. As I said, each list only costs $4 a month to operate. You need to set up a subdomain that points to their list server, and you can usually do that with your registrar's control panels.
But this may not be fancy enough for your purposes. If you want to add Web links in your emails and track who clicks on which link, such as for promotional purposes, then you want iContact. I personally don't like rich HTML emails but I know many of you want this, so I mention it here. The cheapest plan is $10 a month for up to 500 names. If you have 2500 names, the fee increases to $30 a month. The more names, the more you pay a month. The advantage of iContact is that you can send out very snazzy emails, with pictures, color, and links to Web sites, and maintaining lists is all they do. You don't have to mess with setting up domains or servers, either. And like the others, everything is set up with a series of Web forms that are fairly easy, with lots of control over how the newsletter will look like.
So there you have it. Good luck with your list.
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About Me
- David Strom
- David Strom has looked at hundreds of computer products over a more than 20 year career in IT and computer journalism. He was the founding editor-in-chief of Network Computing magazine, and now writes for Baseline, Information Security, Tom's Hardware, and the New York Times.